Light Start – Fitbit vs. Apple, record-setting quad, M10 teaser, and Xperia Z is dead
Brett Venter
Who sold it better, Apple or Fitbit? You get one guess
And the first one doesn’t count. Research firm IDC has released some very interesting information regarding the sale of wearable tech in the past year and, as expected, Apple is killing it. The company has shipped more that 11 million Apple Watches in the past nine months on sale. There’s been a massive amount of growth in wearables sales, which have jumped up by 172% over last year. Lest you think that Apple is now the world leader (not yet, at any rate), that title still belongs to Fitbit, who have accounted for a quarter of the wearables shipped over the last 12 months. Looks like they’re still the ones to beat, even if their gear isn’t quite as smart as the average bear.
Okay, flying drones over the English Channel is now a thing
It has long been a self-appointed challenge to cross the English Channel through less-than-conventional means. Humanity have flown planes across. We’ve sent boats and canoes and things. People have gone hypothermia fishing. Wait, swimming. And now a drone has been sent across on a 35 kilometre journey, which took Ocuair’s custom-built Enduro 1 drone 72 minutes to complete. The trip wasn’t as simple as you might think. The flight crew had to hang around on a boat, following the drone as it made its record-setting crossing. But at least no-one was wearing a Speedo.
HTC waits until the end of MWC 2016 to tease the HTC One M10
Hey, let’s have a booth or a stand at the world’s biggest smartphone expo and then… wait until it’s all over to tease the one phone people were expecting to see. That’s HTC’s thinking for 2016, as they’ve teased which has to be the HTC One M10, their newest flagship, right as the convention has closed. They’re using the tagline “Power of 10”, which seems like a no-brainer. What isn’t a no-brainer is their timing. Sure, HTC could have revealed the phone but when standing toe-to-toe with Samsung and LG, you don’t punch them in the face. You wait for them to get a little distance and then throw something so you’ve got a running start, if that’s not too tortured an analogy for you. Looks like we’ve got a standalone reveal on the way. We’ll keep you posted.
Say it ain’t so? Sony reportedly killing the Xperia Z lineup, starting with the Xperia Z6
Well this is rather depressing, if the report is true. Sony is reportedly going to be canning their high-end Xperia Z range of smartphones, according to a report from uSwitch. At the very least, we’re not going to see an Xperia Z6 and since that typically forms the basis of the lineup… well, you do the math. Senior marketing manager for Sony Jun Makino has reportedly said that there will be no Z6, going to say – more or less – that the Xperia X series is going to be taking its place. Which would explain the impressive camera tech in that recently-revealed range but it’s still rather sad. Even if Xperia Z releases have been expensive and, shall we say, haphazard of late.
